From Fulham with Love

Arthur's day starts badly with the arrival of Nigel, his gormless nephew, who has come to work at the car lot. It gets worse. Arthur sells a load of goods, tracksuits and watches, to a Russian sailor named Sergei, and Sergei then goes missing on a pub crawl, leaving Arthur holding a wad of roubles that the bank refuses to cash. Forbidden currency, apparently. Arthur's sale had seemed straightforward at the time, which is never a good sign in this line of work. The roubles sit in the till like a monument to a deal that went nowhere.

But the roubles are the least of it. One of the crew has gone missing and tried to defect, and the ship's glamorous bosun, Natasha, is convinced Arthur helped him. Chisholm, over-zealous as ever, starts arresting people, and before long Arthur, Terry and Nigel are all in custody, with an international incident hanging over the whole mess. Arthur's protests that he merely sold the man some tracksuits fall on deaf ears. Only a series of near misses stops it becoming a diplomatic disaster.

Rula Lenska plays Natasha with a steeliness that makes Arthur's excuses sound even thinner than usual. Michael Gothard is Sergei, who gets the best of the story by simply walking off and leaving the chaos behind him. Joe Melia is Ernie, and Tony Caunter's Chief Insp. Norton lends a hand. The bosun pursues Arthur with the single-mindedness of a woman who has decided who is to blame, and he is not about to talk her out of it.

Tony Hoare and Leon Griffiths wrote it, and Francis Megahy directed. Dennis Waterman is Terry, George Cole is Arthur, Glynn Edwards is Dave, Patrick Malahide is Chisholm, and Michael Povey is D.C. Jones, with Jonathan Warren as the nephew who started it all.

The title promises Bond and delivers a pub crawl, which is about right for this show.